Almost forty-four years of brutal communism left a deep and festering wound that would be hard to heal and would scar a few generations. In 1990 the world found out about the dreadful orphanages where hundreds of thousands of "orphans" were institutionalized under the benevolent "care of the state."

These children were abandoned by their parents out of desperation because they already had too many children to support at home and it was impossible to feed them in an economy in which everything was rationed and the grocery stores were empty. It was a choice between death by starvation or accepting the magnanimous "care of the state" who promised them gentle care, food, and education.Other children were abandoned because they were born imperfect or became sick, and the state refused to treat them medically in the substandard hospitals and polyclinics. Rationing medical care in the utopian paradise of communism dictated that the weakest in society, the elderly and the very young, be neglected and institutionalized to a miserable existence in unimaginable hell holes.Izidor Ruckel spent 11 years of his life in such an institution, a "Camin/Spital pentru Copii Deficienti." His parents abandoned him there when he contracted polio at an early age and the hospital institutionalized him. Vaccines, just like drugs and medical care, were scarce, and doses often ran out before all children were immunized. Many villagers were too uneducated to understand the importance of vaccinating their children against polio and other childhood diseases.After ABC’s "20/20" aired a special on the plight of these terribly neglected children, Izidor was adopted by a California family and brought to San Diego. He describes the trepidation and excitement when the family promised to come back and get him, the dreams to come to America, of the show "Dallas," his let-down when he thought he had been stood up, and the elation when they came back for him.In a Washington Post video, Janice Tomlin, former "20/20" producer, talks about the megalomaniac Ceausescu who controlled Romania with an iron fist. "He basically destroyed the country. He outlawed abortion, he outlawed contraception, and every woman was required to have five children. In order to have a strong country, he needed to populate the country," she said.

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While she is correct that he destroyed the country, it was not because he outlawed contraception and abortion. He condemned 20 million people to a life of total control, from cradle to grave, when sometimes death was a relief from the pain and misery of exploitative egalitarian life for the masses, while the communist elites lived in the lap of luxury in fancy homes, took expensive vacations, shopped in their own stores, and were treated in their own hospitals by western-trained doctors.

Contraceptives were not known well or easily available in socialist/communist Romania; women used abortion as a form of contraception. If they could find contraceptives on the black market, they were expensive, and women did not take them daily.

Women were certainly encouraged by law to have children to replenish the dying population but were not dictated to have five. The more children a woman had, the more welfare she received from the communist state. Country folks in general had lots of kids in order to have enough hands tending the co-operative farms and a place to stay in old age in the absence of nursing homes.

Sighetul Marmatiei, where Izidor was born, is certainly a very impoverished area, and was particularly so during the communist regime.

Tom Jarriel’s report from ABC showed the cruel treatment of children in these orphanages. People were full of outrage yet nobody in this country bats an eye knowing that more than 40 million babies were aborted in this country since Roe v. Wade – it is considered a "choice" to murder a baby in the womb.

"Izidor was not abandoned into another family, he was abandoned into a hell hole," said Janice Tomlin.

Dr. Jane Aronson, adoption specialist, described the children, "They were emaciated, skeletal… I’ve never seen that anywhere except in Romania." I wonder if she had equal access to orphanages in communist North Korea, Cuba, the Soviet Union, or China of that time.

Watching these children, most of whom have never been touched by human hands, hugged, loved, kissed, spoken to, read to, rocking themselves endlessly with a blank stare was heartbreaking.

Dr. Charles Nelson, professor of Pediatrics and Neuroscience at Harvard University, explained how the adopting families in this country were not prepared to intervene in the development of the children who still remembered what had happened to them while raised in an institution that neglected them during their most important formative years.

He also explained that institutionalized children have "lower IQs, hyperactivity, attention deficit disorders, anxiety, attachment problems, difficulties in interpersonal relationships," and show on scans smaller brains and less electrical activity. "Interventions may not yield the expected outcomes" even in cases when the children were not raised in institutions but were severely mistreated early in life.

Izidor is now in his early thirties and wants to rebuild his life, to help others. He said, "Sighetul Marmatiei is always going to be my hometown. My life is awareness, speaking for those orphans who did not get out."

Yearning for his real identity, for his biological roots, Izidor concluded with sadness and determination in his voice, "I’ve been known more as an orphan for 22 years now, that is my identity, and I would like to close that chapter and not be known as an orphan."

The scars left on the soul and minds of so many surviving victims of communism are hard to heal.

Listen to Dr. Paugh on Butler on Business, every Wednesday to Thursday at 10:49 AM ESTDr. Ileana Johnson Paugh, (Romanian Conservative) is a freelance writer (Canada Free Press, Romanian Conservative, usactionnews.com), author, radio commentator (Silvio Canto Jr. Blogtalk Radio, Butler on Business, The Liberty Express, Free Market Radio, and Republic Broadcasting Network), and speaker. Her book, "Echoes of Communism, is available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle. Short essays describe health care, education, poverty, religion, social engineering, and confiscation of property. A second book, "Liberty on Life Support," is also available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle. A third book, "U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy," is a best seller at Amazon.com under Globalism, Politics, and Environmental Policy.

Her commentaries reflect American Exceptionalism, the economy, immigration, and education.Visit her website, ileanajohnson.com.

In Canada, over eight-million people trace their roots to countries that suffered or still suffer under communism. Since the beginning of the first communist regime in 1917 Russia, immigrants from communist countries have flocked to Canada in search of freedom and safety.

Canada, being the multicultural country that it is, has sizeable populations that stem from communist or post-communist countries. Canadian communities that support the memorial to victims of communism include: Belarusian, Chinese, Croatian, Cuban, Czech, Estonian, German, Hungarian, Korean, Latvian, Mennonite, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovakian, Slovenian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Vietnamese and more.

The idea to build a Canadian memorial to victims of communism was developed through the efforts of a number of these Canadian ethnocultural communities.

This is not an idea dreamed up in an ivory tower; it comes from the hearts of immigrant Canadians and the children of immigrants, who bear the marks of the brutal tyranny of communism.

Refugees from communist countries and their descendants live all over Canada, such as the Czechs in Alberta, Romanians in Montreal, and Russian Mennonites in Manitoba. These groups may not even realize that they are bound together by the shared experience of communist oppression in their homelands.

The suffering of the victims of communism indeed cuts across cultural lines: the suffering of a Cambodian under Pol-Pot, or a Chinese under Mao, or a Ukrainian under Stalin share the common experience of being a victim of communism. In a multicultural country like Canada where we seek to find unity among diversity, this is a powerful link between ethnocultural communities.

The proponents of this memorial felt strongly that it be built on federal land in Ottawa. To build on national capital region land one must get approval from the National Capital Commission, the government agency that oversees the use and development of national capital region land.

Getting a proposal accepted is not an easy or simple task. Memorial proposals must fulfil a number of criteria and the commission is selective, as it should be, about what gets built in the national capital region.

One of the NCC's main requirements is that a memorial has "national symbolic importance." The memorial to victims of communism was deemed to fulfil this requirement. In September, 2009, the project was approved by the commission with the recommendation that the title include recognition of Canada as a land of refuge for immigrants escaping from communism.

Hence, the official title for the memorial: A Memorial to Victims of Totalitarian Communism -- Canada, a Land of Refuge.

The NCC requested that the word "totalitarian" be added so as not to offend any card-carrying communists, including those belonging to Canada's own Communist party.

However, as has been pointed out numerous times by the memorial's supporters, including many journalists and politicians, all Communist regimes are totalitarian in nature.

The idea that there exists a benign form of communism is generally rebuffed these days; the myth that there is good communism and bad communism has seen its day.

Now, people speak of "the crimes of communism."

The seminal work on this topic, The Black Book of Communism, details and focuses on crime as the defining characteristic of communist systems throughout communism's existence and wherever it has cropped up in the world.

First published in France in 1997, The Black Book lays out the fullness of communism's crimes in grisly but scholarly detail. It lists the worldwide communist death toll as upwards of 100 million.

Two important points the book makes, in addition to its comprehensive documentation of communism's crimes, are:

1) "Communist regimes did not just commit criminal acts (all states do so on occasion); they were criminal enterprises in their very essence: on principle, so to speak, they all ruled lawlessly, by violence, and without regard for human life."

2) "Each national communism has been linked by an umbilical cord to the Soviet womb, with its goal of expanding the worldwide movement."

Commentators on history tend to separate different communist regimes from each other as if this linking did not exist. Likewise, there is a failure to group together the sufferings of the victims under the umbrella which they all belong: communism.

Commemorations have followed suit.

For example, in Ottawa there is a memorial commemorating the wave of Hungarian immigrants to Canada following the 1956 uprising against communism in Hungary. There is a memorial commemorating the escape to Canada of the Vietnamese boat people in the late 1970s. There is a Canadian memorial commemorating Katyn, the mass slaughter of Polish officers by the Communists in 1940, and several for the victims of the Holodomor, the communist-forced famine in Ukraine in 1932-33.

The word "communism" does not appear on the plaques of these memorials, however, they are all commemorations of communist crimes.

The Canadian memorial to victims of communism will bring all these sufferings together, under the name "communism."

The 20th century was deeply marked by communism. The greater part of the century (more than 80 years) saw communism oppressing the lives of about one-third of humanity on four continents. It is yet to be seen how communism will fare in the 21st century. It is a certainty though, that acknowledging the truth about the suffering caused by communist regimes is something a democratic, freedom-loving nation like Canada should embrace.

Carolyn Foster is the project co-ordinator for Tribute to Liberty, the Toronto-based organization behind the Canadian memorial to victims of communism project. Foster grew up in Winnipeg and is a graduate of the University of Manitoba, and of the creative communications program at Red River College.

Immigrants from Communist regimes

Some examples of Canadian immigrants who fled Communist regimes in their homelands include: